Perhaps John Boehner Would Like To Try Governing?

I am very much in agreement with Jonathan Chait's argument in this post, where he suggests that "[l]ast night’s House vote to approach disaster aid for communities hit by Hurricane Sandy may turn out to be one of the signal moments of President Obama’s second term." The key point is that the relief bill passed despite the opposition of a pretty overwhelming majority of Republicans; specifically, 179 Republicans voted Nay, with just 49 voting Aye. With all but one Democrat voting for the bill, that was enough for passage. But the remarkable thing is that the bill even got brought to the floor in the first place, given the Republicans' long-time tradition of the so-called "Hastert Rule," a.k.a. the Majority of the Majority rule. The idea is that only those pieces of legislation which command majority support among the Republican caucus get brought to a vote on the floor of the House, even if there are 218 Representatives who support some other bill. From what I've heard, in fact, during the previous Congress Boehner tried out an even more hard-line version of that rule, only bringing to a vote those bills which commanded a full 218 Republican votes. Bills for which, that is, zero Democratic support was needed for passage. That's, well, pretty extreme, as it gives the roughly 25 most extreme members of the Republican caucus a veto over all legislation. (Any other group of 25 Republicans also have a veto, but given that Democrats control the Senate and Presidency, it's the hardest-right 25 whose veto matters the most.)

The hurricane relief bill, in other words, passed in rather flagrant defiance of the Hastert Rule. I've heard that it was the second-largest majority of the majority caucus ever voting against a bill that passed. The fiscal cliff deal also passed with minority support among Republicans. That's two violations of the Hastert Rule in January 2013, though they happened in different Congresses. If this trend continues, it could get very interesting. John Boehner has often seemed to show signs of interest in governing. He keeps trying to reach these Grand Bargain-ish agreements with Obama, who keeps wanting to play along, almost like a Grand Coalition except without any diminution of the public antagonism. Then his caucus refuses to cooperate even a tiny little bit, and everything goes all to hell. Well, now he's got a smaller caucus. This means that the hypothetical Obama + Senate Democrats + House Democrats + Moderate fringe of House Republicans coalition is a lot more plausible, because you need a lot fewer of those moderate House Republicans. And they don't even need to be real moderates, so long as they're pragmatists who are willing to do what John Boehner tells them.

The problem for Boehner is, basically, Nancy Pelosi. This screw-the-Hastert-Rule coalition is entirely dependent on massive support from Democrats to keep the number of Republican votes needed to a minimum, and Nancy Pelosi is a lot more left-wing than either the Senate Democratic caucus or President Obama. So there's a limit on how much Boehner can get center-right governance through this strategy, as opposed to centrist governance. And I also wonder whether Obama might not be so willing to be willing to give so much if he can no longer be confident that the bulk of the House GOP will scuttle any proposed deal, no matter how capitulated. Then again, we are talking about a plan that requires a couple dozen Republicans to vote for anything, so there's a limit on how far to the center any legislation can be and get passed. The hope is, however, that the overlap between "far enough left to get the support of Obama/Reid/Pelosi" and "far enough right to get the support of Boehner and ~18 of his caucus" is non-zero, unlike the overlap between things the Democratic leadership could support and things the median House Republican could support.


What are the prospects for various issues if, as I sort of suspect, John Boehner would actually like to try his hand at being a partner in the grand enterprise of governing this nation, and is willing to piss off the majority of his caucus to do it? Well, I doubt it helps any serious climate legislation all that much, barring some developments that shift the national mood on that subject; enough moderate Democrats dislike the concept, and there's little enough Republican support, that the watered-down Waxman-Markey bill only barely passed with a pretty huge Democratic majority. However, I think this strategy could be quite fruitful on immigration reform; Boehner, like all the party leaders, must know that the hardline approach to that issue is shooting the Republican Party in the foot with a very large gun for the medium-to-long-term. Presumably, then, he'd like to do something about it, but his caucus won't let him: a perfect opportunity for this maneuver. As for the issue du jour, gun control, it's rumored that some Republicans might be open to expanding background checks, though not to a renewed assault weapons ban. Again, perhaps this strategy might get a background-checks bill through the House.

Of course, if the House Republicans are going to impeach the President over his gun initiatives, that may kind of disrupt things. (Please let them impeach him. It would be so much lols.)